I’ve been with Paydotcom for two years. This was because Clickbank refused my first book. I just put out a second book, and because I feel obligated to Paydotcom for their previous support, I listed the book with them.

It’s been a month and only three affiliates have signed up. There is no listing of New items on the web-site which, of course, would greatly help sellers with new products; but, oh yeah, I can pay more money to have a listing on the main page. What a deal.

For two years the site has been the same. No updates nor improvements; even the same crappy grammar and misspelled words. The only new thing that comes to the site is when Filsaime has a new product he is trying to sell us. Honestly, I have a lot of respect for the guy and he’s made millions of off the Internet, which I haven’t; but if his books/products are a reflection of the Paydotcom site, then I hope he has a good return policy.

Anyway, I’m working on switching over to Clickbank, which I entirely hate to do, because I feel an allegiance with Paydotcom for listing me when Clickbank wouldn’t. I can keep my allegiance with Paydotcom and continue to lose money or break my allegiance and increase my financial success. It’s not that hard of a decision to make.

It’s a shame, really; Paydotcom had so much potential.

Other charges not covered by the article include a $2.50 processing fee by Clickbank on every payment once your threshold has been reached. Also, for us non US citizens we have to cash US$ cheques that also generally incurs a processing fee – can Clickbank send out cheques in other currencies, eg. AUD$?

Also if there is no activity for 90 consecutive days on a Clickbank account you start incurring charges starting at $1 up to $50 after 365 days if your account is in credit. This can be a nightmare to check if you have a number of Clickbank accounts and some ‘older’ products with little traffic.

A positive with Clickbank though is that I do not have any tax concerns as Clickbank is making payments to affiliates and therefore has the audit related issues of knowing who they have paid. Mike tries to get around this by introducing his ‘new’ service http://www.paypeopleonline.com however this costs affiliates each time you pay them.

Since PayDotCom doesn’t actually do the payment processing (PayPal does), they’re limited to what you can do through PayPal, which doesn’t include 1-click upsells (at least not in ways that won’t kill a lot of sales).

As for the membership question, any membership software that works with ClickBank SHOULD handle declines and cancellations — presumably, they use PayPal IPN (instant payment notification) to credit payments to member accounts, so if they payment doesn’t go through, the account doesn’t get credited, so it expires.

I am actively comparing software for shopping cart / affiliate management.

I understand that clickbank now offers a 1-click upsell, but only for vendors with a 6 month history and 5,000 prior sales!

How about PDC? When someone subscribes to my digital content, do they allow a 1-click upsell? Or do customers have to type in their credit card info a second time?

On another note, I have a yearlong micro-continuity program. If a member’s credit card is declined, or s/he cancels her subscription, will PDC alert membership software, so it can shut out that member?

If which membership software does it integrate with?

To those who’ve complained about ClickBank’s payment policy, I have two comments:

1) Yeah, it stinks. But what I think REALLY stinks about it is that the commissions they don’t pay out don’t go back to the merchant — ClickBank pockets them.

2) If you sell anything on ClickBank, you know by now that for a VERY high percentage of your sales, the buyer is also the affiliate. Customers are abusing ClickBank sellers just to get a discount, but never promoting a single thing.

I don’t think ClickBank should be profiting at the seller’s expense, but I have no qualms with buyers who never promote anything not getting the benefit.

is there a problem with merchant refusing to pay?

Rimzan